Posts Tagged Education
Philistines and other social problems
It was a depressing moment when this news story made the front page of the BBC website ‘ Pupils forced to listen to Mozart’. The head of West Park School in Derby, Brian Walker, punishes his students in detention by making them listen to classical music, “featuring Elgar, Mozart, Verdi and Bach.” They are often also forced to watch an educational video, such as the ’story of math’.
Short-selling our most precious assets
Posted by Anastasia de Waal in Education on 16/03/2009
Over the last decade the government has made a number of attempts to revolutionise the teaching profession, some less successful than others. The most recent proposition is particularly questionable. The plan is to implement a ‘fast track’ teacher training course, in which candidates are fully trained and working in the classroom within six months. As if this was not controversial enough, it is said to be geared towards ex-City workers. Read the rest of this entry »
Teachers’ verdicts on the three parties’ education policies
Posted by Pete Quentin in Education on 19/09/2008
Whilst the Liberal Democrats are having to work hard for coverage of their policy proposals this week, amidst a storm of financial and political crises, their education policies do appear to have caught the attention of teachers, according to a Times Education Supplement (TES) poll published today, writes Anastasia de Waal.
Critical Mass: Government’s ‘Small’ Infant Classes Too Big
Posted by Claire Daley in Education on 09/09/2008
Infant classes of 20 or under needed to close the achievement gap
OECD figures out today show how poorly the UK continues to compare internationally on class size. Primary class sizes rank 4th largest at 25.8 (compared to the OECD average of 21.5). Additional government figures reveal that in England’s primary schools in 2007/08 the average class size was even higher, at 26.2 pupils per class. According to the evidence, this matters most in infant classes (for 4-7 year-olds, Reception to Year 2), which rose from 25.6 in 2006/07 to an average of 25.7 pupils per class.
“And in the twilight zone, trees are purple (not blue, as Gove claims!)”
Posted by Claire Daley in Education on 27/08/2008
Dr Ruth Lupton of the Institute of Education has taken the Conservative’s recent education report, A Failed Generation, to task for using dodgy statistics to claim that the education gap between rich and poor has widened on New Labour’s watch. Her criticisms are powerful but not exactly an overwhelming indictment of the report. One of its claims was based on a statistic on SATS mistakenly provided by the DCSF suggesting, helpfully, that results of repeated information requests from government departments are not especially accurate.
GCSEs – or the poor-man’s equivalent
Posted by Claire Daley in Education on 21/08/2008
Poor quality ‘vocational’ or ‘vocationally related’ qualifications at GCSE are locking both low-income pupils and vocational education into second-class status.
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Pseudo ‘vocational’ qualifications being used to artificially reach A*-C GCSE targets
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Poorer pupils more likely to be pushed into vocational qualifications
Out of the thousands of pupils getting their GCSE results today, many will have been sold short with sub-standard vocational qualifications.
A new report from independent think-tank Civitas, School Improvement – or the ‘Equivalent’, shows how a blind focus on the A*-C benchmark, together with a failure to truly improve schools, has led to a scenario in which pupils are being encouraged to opt out of academic courses and into irrelevant so-called ‘vocational’ qualifications to boost national GCSE results.